“Self Portrait” by Copyright © 2015 Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved.
This blog is just a quick update…I have recently been in touch with young people who belong to, or I should say are in communiqué with, the Old Souls…
Old Souls are those ancestors who have passed on and who regularly communicate with children and other young people in their efforts to keep the majority of us on the straight-and-narrow path…
I cannot begin to tell you how many people I know who are the parents of small children who speak as if they are well over the age of eighty when they speak…All I can say is that it is the Old Souls that speak to and through these children and young adults…
I have also experienced this with the young people that I have taught and/or mentored and/or influenced in some way. Quite often, I hear some pearl of wisdom, some saying or colloquialism that they are much too young to know. It comes out of their mouths as if my/our grandparents or great grandparents are speaking through them…
I have learned to listen to that Old Wisdom coming from young mouths…I have also learned to completely let go of that Western Judaic-Christian tradition that, unfortunately, draws a sharp demarcation between the secular and the sacred…I have known this to be problematic for quite some time. It has taken me nearly a lifetime to BELIEVE it was problematic…
In most of the many varied African cosmological traditions, a problem (or a person who presents themselves as a problem) was there to teach everyone involved in the problem an important moral or ethical lesson…The requirement was to experience the problem and fully learn the lesson and in order to learn the lesson one must be fully human—not holy—but human…
In my own very recent and past losses, I have learned to trust this fully human experience from the young people I have encountered (and by young, I mean post-Baby Boomers) who do not need judgment as much as they need our guidance and love. They do not need criticism as much as they need our support and cushion, as they try and fail and learn from their experiences and failures and successes…
And we must remember and acknowledge that they are not as young as we older folk would like to believe they are…They come bearing the gifts of the Old Souls and we would do well to listen and learn…I have learned to listen. When I do, I often I hear my parents and grandparents voices…Àṣé!
Copyright © 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved.
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Leslye Joy Allen 